The community was founded in 1886 by Memphis entrepreneur, Enoch Ensley, as a new industrial city on the outskirts of a rapidly developing Birmingham (then just 15 years old) and directly adjacent to the Pratt coal seam.

2025年1月4日 · The Ensley Works was an open-hearth steel plant operating between 1888 and 1976 in Ensley. It was owned by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI), which became a division of U. S. Steel in 1907. For much of its existence, Ensley Works was the largest producer of steel ingots and rail in the Southern United States.

The Downtown Ensley Historic District is historically significant as the commercial core of the Birmingham suburb of Ensley. The town was founded in 1887 to service the workers of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company’s Ensley Works, then the largest of TCI’s early facilities in the Birmingham District.

2021年5月27日 · The Ensley Works in Birmingham, Alabama, operated between 1888 and 1976 and became part of U.S. Steel in 1907. For years, it was the largest steel producer in the Southeast. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Photographic Archives

2020年4月29日 · Ensley is a large community located in Opossum Valley in the western section of Birmingham. It is named for its founder and promoter Enoch Ensley and was home of the mammoth Ensley Works operated by the Tennessee Coal Iron & Railroad Company (a division of U. S. Steel after 1907 ).

2016年12月2日 · After moving to Birmingham through an 1886 merger, TCI President Enoch Ensley envisioned building a steel empire. TCI was on the verge of becoming one of the most significant iron and steel companies in the United States. The old TCI steelworks in Ensley is now covered in overgrowth with the buildings barely visible through the trees.

Ensley High School was an all-white school until September 1964, when the school was integrated, thankfully without any major incidents. The student body shifted to primarily African-American by the mid-1970s due to the major loss of the steelworks and persistent racism and segregation in the Birmingham area.

At its apex in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Ensley was the home of world-class steel production-four open hearth blast furnaces that could exceed the production of any factory in the world- boasted a modern sanitary sewer system and a highly organized grid of commercial and residential properties, and even inspired the arts.

2021年12月21日 · “Straightening the paths for the Iron Horse” at the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in Ensley, Alabama. Here workmen at the Ensley Rail Mill straighten a steel rail, which presently will become a portion of track for some southern railroad. ca. 1949 photographer Roy T. Carter, Sr. Birmingham News-Age-Herald Q46227

2010年3月21日 · A series of channels, locks and dams in the Village Creek watershed would lead to former Ensley Works property, which was to be transformed into a 4.5-square-mile reservoir and harbor.